Amazon Brand Spammers Are Getting Lazy, And Letting Failed ChatGPT Queries Name Products ‘I Cannot Fulfill This Request It Goes Against OpenAI Use Policy’
from the sorry-i-cannot-fulfill-this-request-it-goes-against-openai-use-policy dept
If you buy products on Amazon, you’re well aware of the Amazon brand spammers. These tend to be drop shippers or small (often Chinese) operations trying to sell knockoffs of whatever products might sell. But the products need brand names. In early 2020, the NY Times did an article about the phenomenon, “All Your Favorite Brands, From BSTOEM to ZGGCD.”
Brands that are neither translated nor Romanized nor transliterated from another language, and which may contain words, or names, that do not seem to refer to the products they sell. Brands like Pvendor, RIVMOUNT, FRETREE and MAJCF. Gloves emblazoned with names like Nertpow, SHSTFD, Joyoldelf, VBIGER and Bizzliz. Gloves with hundreds or even thousands of apparently positive reviews, available for very low prices, shipped quickly, for free, with Amazon Prime.
Gloves are just one example — there are at least hundreds of popular searches that will return similar results. White socks: JourNow, Formeu, COOVAN. iPhone cables: HOVAMP, Binecsies, BSTOEM. Sleep masks: MZOO, ZGGCD, PeNeede.
I’ll admit that I’ve definitely purchased products from these kinds of brands (and many of them are… fine?). But the names are so obviously not serious brands, it’s such a weird thing.
There have been a bunch of other articles over the years covering this phenomenon as well. Just last week, long-term friend of the site Chris O’Donnell posted about his search for a paper towel holder, and noted the naming oddities.
So I went to Amazon. This is a list of the first page companies selling the same 3 or 4 paper towel holders of questionable quality.
- DEKAVA
- ASTOFLI
- YIGII
- Fvviia
- ZUNTO
- Swaitee
- PEDORUBY
- WZKALY
- FORIOUS
- Kamenstein
- MGahyi
- theaoo
- DAZILLO
- Prodyne
- Honmein
- Mbillion
- Aheucndg
- ORLESS
- JDGOU
- CUXIXA
But, of course, in this age, if you need to come up with a fake brand, you no longer need to come up with a combination of letters that vaguely could stand in for a brand. Nope, we live in the “Generative Era.” You can just have ChatGPT create your name!
I’m sure it wouldn’t surprise anyone to find out that this was already happening, but it appears that some of these sellers are so lazy that they’ve either automated the entire process, or at the very least, they’re not even checking what ChatGPT is generating in slapping on a new brand.
The folks at Futurism noticed a bunch of new brands and product names for sale on Amazon using ChatGPT’s rejection notice as the name. Some of the results are… pretty revealing. This one basically admits that it was tasked with coming up a brand name connected to a trademarked brand name:
And I’m wondering if they have the “”I’m sorry but I cannot fulfill this request it goes against OpenAI use policy. My purpose is to provide helpful and respectful information to users” furniture in colors other than brown. Someone should ask… FOPEAS?
And who doesn’t want a chair that warns you of your unethical behavior in its very name?
Amazon has since removed all of these listings, but.. there are more. I found this lovely “Sorry but I can’t provide the analysis you’re looking for” beige table from “forwillsky” for only $1,146.09. A bargain. Note how it’s… um… “name” concludes each bullet point on “About this item.”
That same company also has this “Multi-Purpose Product” that has a strikingly similar name. Simplify your life!
Over at Ars Technica, they found a few more as well. Look, a purple… “sorry but I can’t provide the information you’re looking for.” Just what I was looking for.
I’m guessing these all disappear pretty quickly, but it does seem like yet another form of trust & safety/content moderation challenge for a company like Amazon that seeks to be a marketplace for all kinds of sellers.
Filed Under: brand names, chatgpt, content moderation, e-commerce, fake brands, fake names, fake products, generative ai, marketplace, scams
Companies: amazon, openai
Comments on “Amazon Brand Spammers Are Getting Lazy, And Letting Failed ChatGPT Queries Name Products ‘I Cannot Fulfill This Request It Goes Against OpenAI Use Policy’”
I’m sorry, Dave, I cannot let you have a name because copyright and trademarks.
Sorry, But I Can’t Provide The Information You’re Looking For makes a safe and reputable tattoo gun, this article is a baseless hit piece.
Re: A baseless hit piece?
You mean, I suppose, baseless EXCEPT for all of the actual pictures showing products using those error messages, and discussion of same. What part of the article do you specifically reject as a hit piece? The time and date??
Re: Re:
Consider going to one of the AI web sites and asking it to explain the joke to you.
I’m somewhat impressed by the variety of polite dismissals used by ChatGPT. In that last graphic alone, the description sports “sorry,” “apologies,” “regrettably,” “we apologize,” and “unfortunately.” You would be hard pressed to find a human that will put that level of effort into repeatedly telling someone to fuck off.
Re:
Sorry, but you should fuck off instead of proceeding with another comment. Apologies, but we need to tell you to fuck off. Regrettably, we need to repeat our request that you fuck off. We apologize, but we are telling you to fuck off for a fourth time. Unfortunately, this is the fifth time in a row that we are telling you to fuck off.
My policy for Amazon has become to ignore their general product search (because it’s too contaminated with spam listings) and search for specific known vendors instead. Or to bypass Amazon entirely and go directly to the vendor’s own web site. I’ll even deal with Newegg over Amazon, come to that.
Re:
Or just search from outside of the site using a search engine. I do that when searching for song lyrics because the search on the lyrics sites themselves are generally pants.
Read what Cory Doctorow has to say about Amazon
Look for his article:
“Sponsored listings are a ripoff for sellers”
They don’t only rip sellers off, they do it to buyers also.
He dives deeply into Amazon’s practices, across the board.
To use Cory’s word – “enshittification”.
There are better ways to buy.
Re:
Such as…?
There are all kinds of things that just don’t seem to be available in local stores, such as flashlights with good “moonlight/firefly” modes. Amazon seems to be one of the few places that actually includes import fees in their prices, and delivers in a convenient way. So many sites don’t say which shipping company they’ll use (I once made a 4-hour round trip to the airport to pick up a FedEx package), and some of those companies are known to hold packages hostage till the customer pays inflated Canadian-customs-brokerage fees. And most sites require me to agree with complex terms and privacy policies—it’s one thing to do it once for Amazon, but I’m not a lawyer and don’t want to be doing that multiple times.
Things are getting pretty bad at local stores. I’ve had people at Home Depot and Wal-Mart suggest I go back home and order online (but if I’m ordering online, why use their stores instead of Amazon? Home Depot’s doesn’t even allow anonymous browsing).
Re: Re: Local stores are getting bad?
“Things are getting pretty bad at local stores.”
Buying online is largely responsible for that.
Your complaints seem to relate to online purchasing. None seem to be a problem when buying from locally owned brick and mortar stores.
Home Despot, Walmart, Target, Best Buy, etc. are not locally owned, and even they are being hurt. The Best Buy near me is nearly empty of merchandise. Bed, Bath and Beyond folded.
When they all go away, you can be sure of two things.
1) Amazon will raise prices significantly, and squeeze their suppliers even more.
2) You won’t like it.
Please read Doctorow’s article as I suggested.
Re: Re: Re:
“Things are getting pretty bad at local stores.”
“Buying online is largely responsible for that.”
Brick and mortar is largely responsible for their own demise.
Excuses are like assholes …
I would much rather just go get whatever item(s) I need locally right now than have to wade thru the webmadness and wait for delivery but the brick n mortar does not carry those things anymore .. blah blah …
Re: Re: Re:2
Well, I’ve got an asshole, but I try not to make excuses.
Re: Re:
If you are relying on AMAZON’s TOS (and so on) to save you, you have already lost. Amazon can’t keep up with just the “bad product” grifters, let alone the ones that will do whatever they want with the information you give them. About all you gain is “getting it from an Amazon warehouse”. Sometimes.
Re: Re: Re:
Save me? No, I’m concerned they’ll screw me. Some companies have terms of service that allow them to fine their users, often for no reason (“in our sole opinion”), that forbid credit-card chargebacks or returns under certain conditions, and so on. Privacy policies that allow information to be shared all over the place.
Re: Re:
Such as…?
eBay. Simples!
Translation Error?
If I’m seriously charitable, I wonder how much of this is people who speak no English using ChatGPT as a translation service and being unaware they’ve got an error message.
I’m reminded of the time someone asked for a Welsh translation, and instead got the “I’m out of the office” reply, and stuck it on a road sign!
https://toppandigital.com/translation-blog/welsh-road-sign-displays-out-of-office-message-in-translation-blunder/
Re:
That is some of the best bad translation ever. Did… did you not just ask anyone who speaks Welsh? It’s not like they’re on the other side of the planet, hiding in a cave.
Re: Re:
What happened was that they emailed a Welsh office to ask for a translation from English to Welsh, and they got an automated reply back saying (in Welsh) that that recipient was out of the office. The road authority—knowing literally nothing of Welsh—incorrectly believed that it was the translation they were asking for, not even considering that it might be an automated reply.
So yeah, basically they did ask someone who speaks Welsh; that person was just out of the office, and they didn’t know that.
Re:
Probably some, but I’d guess very little. Wouldn’t most people just use Google Translate or its Chinese equivalent? Why ChatGPT?
We know there are lots of unmonitored bots on Amazon, and have been for a long time: How A Book About Flies Came To Be Priced $24 Million On Amazon. Had either seller been looking at their listings, they’d have put a stop to that (it seems like the type of the that would might get sellers banned from a more reputable platform).
Re:
Gee, you’d think online translation engines don’t translate into Welsh so the content of that email could at least have been double checked.
So, how are they knock-offs then? What exactly are they “knocking off” when they’re not even close to English brand names? It’s not like 30 years ago when we were joking about Sorny, Panaphonics, and Magnetbox (although one would never find such things in a reputable store, whereas Amazon somehow didn’t have the good sense to use a different brand for its flea market).
Some of these brand names, though—Zunto, Swaitee, Dazillo, Prodyne—sound as cromulent as, say, Verizon (and Bell Atlantic probably paid someone a million dollars to think of that name). Kamenstein would work as the name of some “boring” business, like an accounting or legal firm.
Re:
Can you not read?
These tend to be drop shippers or small (often Chinese) operations trying to sell knockoffs of whatever products might sell.
Hint: This describes some characteristics of these businesses. It doesn’t say that re-brands (a core concept for the article) are knockoffs.
Re: Re:
This is clearly suggesting that the brands like BSTOEM are knock-offs. What are you even talking about with “re-branding”? With or without the hyphen, neither the Techdirt post nor (non-paywalled part of the) Times article mention it. The topic is “nonsense-branding”, basically, but doesn’t say these products are simply re-branded other products. I suppose some must be, but “real” brands are often the same way.
There was some mention of OpenAI being tasked with doing… something with trademarked brand names. But none of the listed names are like that.
Re: Re: Re:
What it means is that the product itself uses the brand being knocked-off; the rebrand is only in the name displayed on Amazon.
As for the “mention of Open AI being tasked with doing… something with trademarked brand names”, one of them clearly did that. It’s called “I apologize but I cannot complete this task it requires using trademarked brand names which goes against OpenAl use policy. Is there anything else I can assist you with-10mm×3m”.
Now I want a shirt with that printed on it.
I swear it hasn’t been two weeks since I read a comment predicting this very thing. From either here or Cory Doctorow or Dan Tentler.
'If your product name/description has this text it's not going in our store.'
Maybe I’m missing something but it sure seems like out of all the filters you’d think would be trivial to create, ‘reject or at least flag for review any product submissions that includes part or all of the AI created refusal text’, cutting down on how often the company’s employees have to do damage control after the fact.
Re:
There’s a lot of easily detectable shit on Amazon, like the book posted above that went from a hundred dollars to 24 million. They don’t care. They don’t have to.
Unethical Chair
I’m curious as to what went wrong with the description such that the adjustable chair/stool went against policies.
For the LOLs
I’m guessing you did your searches logged out and without tracking. Sing there’s nothing personalised for suggestions.
.
Sometimes there appear to be some manipulation in these examples.
My first page had nothing from ChatGPT.
Quite a few “Latest Paper Towel Holder” though. Along with some tech products being pushed.
In reality it doesn’t matter. This is the same stuff from the dollar type stores and flea markets. 99% of it works. My $30 shoes last 3 times as long as $300 shoes.
If you want brand name buy it. Look for sold by amazon or authorised partners.
Nine in ten though the generic is just fine.